This blog is about using ICTs to develop climate change preparedness solutions built around Energy Internet and autonomous eVehicles

Energy Internet and eVehicles Overview

Governments around the world are wrestling with the challenge of how to prepare society for inevitable climate change. To date most people have been focused on how to reduce Green House Gas emissions, but now there is growing recognition that regardless of what we do to mitigate against climate change the planet is going to be significantly warmer in the coming years with all the attendant problems of more frequent droughts, flooding, sever storms, etc. As such we need to invest in solutions that provide a more robust and resilient infrastructure to withstand this environmental onslaught especially for our electrical and telecommunications systems and at the same time reduce our carbon footprint.

Linking renewable energy with high speed Internet using fiber to the home combined with autonomous eVehicles and dynamic charging where vehicle's batteries are charged as it travels along the road, may provide for a whole new "energy Internet" infrastructure for linking small distributed renewable energy sources to users that is far more robust and resilient to survive climate change than today's centralized command and control infrastructure. These new energy architectures will also significantly reduce our carbon footprint. For more details please see:

How to use Green Bond Funds to underwrite costs of new network and energy infrastructure: https://goo.gl/74Bptd

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

If you have no power, energy efficiency is irrelevant

[There are dozens, if not hundreds of research initiatives around the
world looking at improving energy efficiency in computers and networks.Greentouch, Greenlight, GreenICT, etc are some typical examples. It is
important to note that with energy efficiency we will only hope to
reduce energy consumption and thereby lessen our dependence on coal and
other dirty fuel sources. In the case of IT however, given its dramatic
growth rate, the best we can hope for, in the short term, is to slow
down the rate of growth of energy consumption.

But all these
initiatives suffer from a single fundamental flaw in thinking – and that
is the assumption that power from the grid will always be available, on
demand and effectively unlimited.

In a rapidly warming world,
with a growing dependence on renewable energy, means the reliability and
availability of power from the grid is going to be less certain. Many
jurisdictions such as California for example are committed to have 30%
of their power from renewable resources. This means that on cloudy,
windless days, the utilities will be scrambling to purchase power from
out of state or shed low priority customers. Countries like Switzerland
and Germany are also facing an impending power shortage because of their
commitment to abandon nuclear power and to rely increasingly on
renewable energy. While energy storage and integrated grids will help
mitigate some of the challenges of dealing with a greater percentage of
renewable power in the energy mix, new energy architectures are needed
on the demand side of the energy equation. So our future challenge will
be more than simply reducing energy consumption but living in a world
with frequent power outages as more of our energy comes from renewable
sources.

A good example of this forward thinking of energy
outages versus energy efficient is a recent project be undertaken by
AMD, Hewlett Packard and Clarkson University funded by NYSERDA in New
York State to carry out research in follow the wind/follow the sun cloud
networks. One of the challenges facing New York state is the number of
stranded wind power assets that exist in the state, because “Nimbyism”
has prevented the deployment of high voltage power lines to connect
these facilities to the grid. As a result the state is funding this
project to explore the idea of deploying small computing pods at each
windmill linked together by fiber to build a follow the wind/follow the
sun cloud/network.

Similar initiatives are the “Free Lunch”
program at Cambridge University.
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/dtg/www/files/publications/public/sa497/akoush-hotos11.pdf

And,
of course, the Greenstar network – the world’s first zero carbon cloud
and network is built around the same principle of solely using
intermittent renewable energy to power the cloud/network.—BSA]

Some pointers:

Greenstar Network
www.greenstarnetwork.com

A great demo of how a follow the wind/follow the sun network would operate can be found here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFPvBjURlHA

GreenEnergies
http://greenergies.blogspot.com/

Green ICT emissions
http://green-global-economy.blogspot.com/

Computing for the Future of the Planet
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/dtg/research/wiki/CFTFP

AMD Teams With NYSERDA, HP, and Clarkson University for Sustainable Data Center Energy Research
Investment Will Fund Study on Clouds Fueled by Wind and Solar Power

SUNNYVALE,
CA, Aug 01, 2011 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) -- AMD AMD -0.29% today
announced its participation with the New York State Energy Research and
Development Authority (NYSERDA), HP and Clarkson University in a
significant research project that looks at the industry-wide challenge
of channeling renewable energy directly to data centers.

"The
distributed computing model of the cloud parallels the distributed
power-generation model of solar and wind energy. Directing power to data
centers from these emerging renewable energy resources without relying
on a large-scale, traditional electrical grid is a key challenge," said
Alan Lee, corporate vice president of Research and Advanced Development,
AMD. "One ultimate goal is the co-location of dynamic energy sources
with dynamic computing resources to improve the economics, performance,
and environmental benefits of both infrastructures."

Because wind and
solar-derived energy can be intermittent, this study will also examine
critical questions of how to automatically shift a compute load between
data centers and maintain reliability.
Backing from NYSERDA and
additional private funding sources are enabling this proposal, developed
by AMD engineers in conjunction with Clarkson University, to enter the
research phase. Students will begin experimentation on effectively
managing data through a distributed network based on renewable energy.
The second phase of the project plans to incorporate hardware elements,
including HP's Performance Optimized Datacenter (POD) based on the AMD
Opteron(TM) processor, purpose-built for energy efficiency and cloud
computing.

HP POD Technology HP's POD portfolio includes the
industry's leading energy-efficient, modular data center. Built on HP
Converged Infrastructure, HP POD technology provides clients currently
burdened with aging infrastructure, limited space and shrinking budgets
the agility needed to rapidly scale and meet increasing capacity
demands. According to HP, the newest solution in the HP POD family, the
EcoPOD, can offer 95 percent greater energy efficiency when compared to
traditional brick-and-mortar data centers.(1) HP will offer this project
its POD expertise in energy-efficient data center design that delivers
maximum density with greater serviceability.
The AMD Research Office
AMD Research conducts work on next-generation computing questions in the
areas of systems and technologies, network infrastructure and power,
among others. It also collaborates on projects with leading
universities, public sector organizations and commercial labs worldwide.
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Green
Internet Consultant. Practical solutions to reducing GHG emissions such
as free broadband and electric highways.
http://green-broadband.blogspot.com/
email: Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com
twitter: BillStArnaud
blog: http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/
skype: Pocketpro

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About Me

Bill St. Arnaud is a consultant and research engineer who works with clients around the world on a variety of subjects such as next generation Internet networks and developing practical solutions to reduce CO2 emissions such as free broadband and dynamic charging of eVehicles. He is an author of many papers and articles on these topics and is a frequent guest speaker. For more details on my research interests see https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Bill_Arnaud